A SIGN OF THE TIMES: TELEVISION AND ELECTORAL POLITICS IN ARGENTINA, 1983-1989 Silvio R. Waisbord Working Paper #190 - January 1993 Silvio R. Waisbord is currently finishing his Ph.D. dissertation for the University of California, San Diego; his topic is “Unplugged Party Lines: Political Parties, Communication, and Election Campaigns in Argentina, 1983-1989.” In the spring semester 1992 he was a Residential Fellow at the Kellogg Institute. ABSTRACT This paper examines the use of television as a political campaign tool in the 1983-1989 elections in Argentina. Campaigns were conducted against the background of a national television system that was subject to both commercial and political pressures. Initially, politicians’ lack of experience in exploiting the medium led to a scramble for air time right before the election. Within a few years, television became the dominant form of political communication. Political candidates soon developed more sophisticated approaches to television campaigning, but failed to reach a deeper understanding of how television could facilitate the interaction between political parties and citizens in a democracy. RESUMEN El presente trabajo analiza el uso de la televisión como instrumento de campaña política en las elecciones de 1983-1989 en la Argentina. Las campañas se llevaron a cabo con el trasfondo de un sistema nacional de televisión sujeto tanto a presiones comerciales como políticas. Inicialmente, la falta de experiencia de los políticos en el uso de este medio de comunicación condujo a una rebatiña por el tiempo en el aire justo antes de la elección. Después de unos pocos años, la televisión se convirtió en la forma dominante de comunicación política. Los candidatos políticos pronto desarrollaron enfoques más sofisticados de campaña televisiva, aunque fracasaron en el logro de un entendimiento más profundo de como la televisión puede facilitar la interacción entre los partidos políticos y los ciudadanos en una democracia. Research on television and election campaigning has been concerned primarily with two dominant models of broadcasting. On the one hand, the extraordinary amount of studies on the U.S. case have dealt with a commercially driven, privately owned television system and its impact on electoral politics (Altheide 1979; Jamieson 1992; Luke 1987; Mendelsohn et al. 1970; Ranney 1983). On the other hand, research on Western European countries has elucidated a remarkably different broadcasting structure: television was originally based on a public-service model, assigning an important role to both Parliament and political parties (Blumler 1983, 1991; Mazzoleni 1987; Schoenbach 1987; Seaton and Pimlott 1987; Siune 1986; Smith 1979; Williams 1975). Despite recent cracks observed in the public broadcasting systems in several European democracies as a result of an ongoing wave of privatization, the use of television for campaigning on both sides of the Atlantic still reveals important contrasts as television presents structural differences and political parties relate differently to television. Though focusing on diverging broadcasting systems, the bulk of the analysis is devoted to tracing the evolution of television in stable democratic regimes. Since its eruption into politics in the 1950s, television has gradually but firmly reshaped the forms through which politicians and parties go public (Agranoff 1972; Blumler et al. 1978; Farrell et al. 1987; Ranney 1983; Smith 1979). The stability of both the U.S. and the post-war European democracies has been the constant background against which television redefined election campaigns. The development of television campaigning during the last decades would be unthinkable without considering the permanence of the political regime; the continuous holding of elections has allowed political parties, politicians, and campaign intelligentsia to progressively alter, reconsider, and master the use of television for electioneering. Television campaigning in post-authoritarian Argentina diverges substantially from these cases. The Argentine television system was neither completely privately owned nor exclusively run by commercial criteria; however, it was not entirely state-owned or managed following strictly political criteria either. Television was a rare breed: neither a fully commercially-driven enterprise nor a public-broadcasting service. In 1983 Argentine election campaigns returned to television after a seven-year absence. After being censored and banned from television screens, political parties and politicos needed to reestablish forms of communication but knew little about television. Their last experience dated back to the turbulent and frantic 1973 election campaign when television was still black and white.1 The old class of politicians, whose political upbringing was rooted in times when 1 Argentine television was converted to color before the 1978 World Cup, thanks to the military government’s laborious dedication to hosting the championship and to broadcasting propaganda worldwide. television scarcely affected political dynamics, remained unfamiliar with the medium, for later they were excluded from access to the screens. The new generation of young politicians had matured outside television, so they had absolutely no previous contacts with the medium and little idea about its political potential. Campaign strategists were also trained in an old style of electioneering that underestimated, or even dismissed, the importance of television. Thus, to understand the evolution of televised campaigning in 1983-1989 Argentina, these two aspects need to be considered: the unique structure of its broadcasting system, and the fact that candidates, young and old alike, had little experience with television. Little can be understood without consideration of the structure of Argentine television during 1983-1989. The goal is not to offer an exhaustive analysis of broadcasting policy during the 1983-1989 period but to present a general framework of the state of Argentine television for a better comprehension of how television was used for canvassing. THE DISPUTE FOR THE SCREENS By the 1980s, television had spread widely. There were forty-four stations in Argentina, ninety-four percent of the households in the city of Buenos Aires and greater Buenos Aires and eighty-four percent of the homes in the rest of the country owned television sets (Morgan and Shanahan 1991). Though the state played an important role in the early beginnings of television during the first Peronist administration in 1951, Argentine television developed in the late 1950s under initiatives from private investors plus economic and technological investments by the three major U.S. networks (Muraro 1974). Yet the state had a major role in the management of television stations during the 1980s. Although fifty-nine percent of stations remained privately owned, the role of the state was substantial because the Buenos Aires channels that produced and distributed most of the national programming were state-owned.2 Transferred to the state by the Peronist government in 1974 on the grounds that the licenses granted to private owners had expired, the four Buenos Aires-based television stations remained state-owned throughout the military government. Those stations as well as other state broadcasting media were not privatized during the authoritarian regime, despite announcements to the contrary by government officials. Two factors account for this. First, constant disputes among the three branches of the armed forces obstructed the development of a unified media policy; and second, the regime’s conception that keeping television in its hands guaranteed full control over the formation of public opinion. 2 Of a total of forty-four television stations, fifteen were state-owned (whether by the central government or local states), twenty-six were privately owned, one was state intervened, and two were run by universities (Todo es Historia 1988). Though the Law of Broadcasting authorizing the privatization of state-owned television and radio stations and excluding media corporations from participating in the bidding was enacted in 1980, the process of privatization proceeded at a very slow pace. Only after the 1982 Malvinas/ Falklands war, and urged on by its unexpected finale, did the government accelerate the process of privatization with the hope of retaining some control over television stations by favoring political allies in the bidding. However, when the newly democratic government was inaugurated in December 1983, only Buenos Aires Channel 9 had been transferred to private owners.3 As a result, the Alfonsín administration inherited, besides dozens of small provincial radio transmitters, an attractive yet problematic legacy from the authoritarian regime: three gigantic, highly indebted, state-owned television stations in the city of Buenos Aires.4 Television was a thorny issue for the Radical government. Though the 1983 Radical party platform set out precise goals, by the end of the five-and-half year term, little of the original plan had been accomplished and the general structure of Argentine television remained basically untouched. During the first years the government did produce quick and major transformations regarding the abolition of censorship and the partial renovation of television programming. However, other major planned reforms were not carried out. The 1983 platform considered a profound reevaluation of the television structure, mainly through the creation of a bicameral